Surfing statisticians: Riding the web-delivery wave of GIS
by
Sama Low Choy
Environmental Information Systems Unit, EPA

A new wave of web-enabled Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide many opportunities for statisticians to help with disseminating statistical information. Two serendipitous byproducts of this are the standardization of statistical datasets and just as importantly, their metadata, together with the “snowballing” effect whereby easy access to statistical information encourages its use. In this talk I outline a number of statistical projects undertaken by our agency with various collaborators which take advantage of new web-enabled GIS.

Within the Environmental Protection Agency (incorporating the Queensland Parks Wildlife Service), statistical support is coordinated from within the Environmental Information Systems Unit comprising spatial information professionals, including GIS project coordinators and cartographers. In this agency it is commonly accepted that “at least 80 per cent of environmental information is spatial in nature”, so this link between information analysis and spatial information management is not surprising. The projects described in the talk illustrate how spatial information infrastructure can help structure and facilitate coordination of statistical information management, analysis, visualization and dissemination.

I provide several case studies to illustrate this interface between a web-enabled spatial information system (GIS) and statistical analysis. One GIS “web-delivery wave” in particular has recently opened many avenues to expand this interface. It is an innovative new agency-wide system called ecosystem which services over two thousand EPA officers geographically dispersed throughout Queensland. These include officers ranging from environmental protection and licensing officers and parks rangers to environmental scientists. This system comprises three components:

1. ecosteps has standards and guidelines for licensing and permitting procedures;

2. ecotracks provides a centrally coordinated client-focussed project management system for all development applications and other license and permit applications (so that clients no longer need to approach up to 20 separate business units for various environmental permits and licenses for a single development application); and

3. dot ecomaps is a centrally managed spatial information decision support tool easily accessible via the intranet, both as a standalone web-enabled GIS and directly for particular licenses or permits via ecotracks.

In this talk I highlight five “surfing” statistical case studies that “ride the wave” of ecomaps:

1. Harnessing ecomaps, an intranet delivered GIS, for delivering statistical information within the agency (eg Census information and environmental indicators) and enforcing information standards. [Contract with Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI), Brisbane office; EISU manages daily maintenance, additions and updates for over one hundred spatial datasets.]

2. Usage statistics of intranet and internet delivered GIS systems: ecomaps, Australian Coastal Atlas and GIS software license managers. [Contract with Mathematical and Statistical Consulting unit, Queensland University of Technology (QUT).]

3. Visualization of environmental indicators from a statewide perspective: case study involving turtle population census statistics. [Collaborative project with Walter Robb, Office of Economic and Statistical Research (OESR), Treasury.]

4. Statistical metadata: ensuring spatial metadata sufficiently describes statistical and modelling aspects (survey design and data or modelling precision/uncertainties) underlying many spatial datasets. [Collaborative project with Walter Robb, Office of Economic and Statistical Research (OESR), Treasury.]

5. Spatial implementation of statistical and other models for species distribution based on climate and/or habitat. [Case study on Red Goshawks initially funded by Natural Heritage Trust; core business for Biodiversity unit within the Environmental Planning Division.]

Date received: June 2, 2002